Three Environmental Activists Deny Charges of Plotting against Forest Service Lab

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Three environmental activists pleaded not guilty to conspiring to attack government targets on behalf of an extremist group, and bail was set for one of the suspects.

SACRAMENTO — Three environmental activists pleaded not guilty to conspiring to attack government targets on behalf of an extremist group, and bail was set for one of the suspects.


Eric McDavid, 28, of Foresthill, California, Zachary Jensen, 20, of Monroe, Washington state, and Lauren Weiner, 20, of Philadelphia, were indicted Wednesday by a federal grand jury. They face five to 20 years in federal prison if convicted of conspiring to use fire or explosives to damage property.


Prosecutors say they scouted targets and were buying materials to build homemade plastic explosives when they were arrested Jan. 13 outside a Kmart store in Auburn, east of Sacramento.


On behalf of the shadowy Earth Liberation Front, they allegedly planned to attack the Nimbus Dam and nearby fish hatchery on the American River near Sacramento, and the U.S. Forest Service's Institute of Forest Genetics in Placerville, in the foothills east of Sacramento.


All three denied the allegations at their arraignment Thursday. A status hearing was scheduled for Feb. 14 before a federal judge.


Prosecutors said all three should be held as flight risks and dangers to the community. U.S. Magistrate Judge Gregory Hollows ordered McDavid and Jensen held in Sacramento County Jail without bond.


But he ruled that Weiner, a college student, can be released on $1.2 million (euro1 million) bail, secured mostly by property her parents own in New York state. The judge ruled Weiner could live with her mother and ordered her to attend school or perform community service while awaiting trial.


Hollows noted that the government has audio and video surveillance, notes, an anarchists' manual seized from the suspects, and the account of a paid FBI informant who lived with the group in a cabin rented and wired by the FBI.


"While this group of defendants may not have possessed a polished expertise in explosives and their use in blowing up targets, there is no doubt from the evidence presented thus far that defendants were deadly serious in their intent to wreak destruction on some type of target which they believed would make a statement in favor of their anti-government, anti-corporate, allegedly pro-environment cause," Hollows wrote in his 12-page order.


But Hollows found little evidence supporting prosecutors' contention that the three were affiliated with either ELF or the similarly shadowy Animal Liberation Front, though he said they may have shared the same goals.


U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott on Wednesday said there is no known connection between the trio and 11 alleged ecoterrorists indicted in Oregon last week. The FBI says groups like ALF and ELF have claimed 1,200 criminal acts causing more than $100 million in damage in the last 15 years.


Source: Associated Press


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